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- Updated April 2003

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Spotlight - Autumn 2003
edited by Maggie Currey

The High Commissioner H.E. Anderson K. Chibwa talks to Spotlight

When Anderson Chibwa arrived to take up his post as High Commissioner to London I asked my young friend Patrick at Zambia House what he made of his new boss. “He’s cool,” was the reply. So my first two meetings with the tall, smiling diplomat were spent looking at him through Patrick’s eyes and listening with Patrick’s ears; and what I saw on these formal occasions was a man who would be good to work for: self-deprecating, laid back, instinctively kind and quick to praise his staff. But also one who would be out of his air-conditioned top-of-the-building offices as much as in them, communicating, with a sharp eye for detail; a boss who had decided, for instance, that flowers would greatly improve the high-ceilinged reception room at Zambia House. Not costly, perishable arrangements, but interior window boxes overflowing with greenery and positioned on the high windowsills, noticeably brightening the room.

I interview Mr. Chibwa at our third meeting. “It is good to see one of our friends – friends are very important to Zambia,” he says warmly, greeting me at the top of the steep High Commissioner’s office stairs and I am grateful for his VIP air-conditioning, on one of the hottest days of summer. We agree that elegant 19th century London houses are not designed for Zambia-type heat. I mention the new greenery and he is pleased. “It is a very small improvement,” he says. “I wish we could afford to do more.”

Anderson Chibwa, 53, is not your obvious choice for the diplomatic service. He holds a Masters degree in population geography and much of his background is that of the analyst and the researcher, working behind the scenes in Africa and America under the aegis of the National Council for Scientific Research and then for the Pan African Institute for Development, where he specialised in rural development. But as he talks through a distinguished career, the importance of individuals to a man who on paper and in his natural reticence could be mistaken for a remote boffin, becomes clear. “Probably the most important job I have so far done was the last one, as a project manager with Care International in Lusaka, where we offered underprivileged children a proper chance in life, through the community schools we helped to set up and support,” he says, talking enthusiastically about the charity-funded schools that are helping to transform the lives of many young Zambians.

Schooling and the importance of friends are inextricably linked for Anderson Chibwa, who has vivid memories of his own formative years at Chikola Trust School in Chingola, and the contribution that was made in particular to his education in the 1960s by English teacher Patricia Moberly, wife of the then vicar of St. Barnabas’s Church, the Reverend Richard Moberly. “She taught me to read Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen and all the English classics; she fired my interest and taught me how to study properly,” he says. And to his delight he has been able to re-establish contact with Dr. Moberly, now chairman of the St. Thomas’s Hospital Trust (and a member of the Zambia Society Trust).

From Chikola, the young Anderson Chibwa went on to the University of Zambia and into the education department, specialising in geography. While at UNZA in the early 1970s he became friends with many young men who were to become politically important, including a law student, Levy Mwanawasa. “Our lives went different ways and I was out of Zambia a good deal in the 1970s and 1980s, studying and working, but you don’t lose good friends and in the late 1980s and early 1990s I became closely involved with the Movement for Multiparty Democracy. I strongly supported Levy Mwanawasa when he resigned as vice-president in the mid-1990s to protest against corruption.” In February this year Anderson Chibwa was appointed to take over the most senior post in the Zambian diplomatic service and arrived in June with his wife and three of his six children.

I had talked to Mrs. Grace Chibwa at the official party that celebrated their visit to Buckingham Palace for the presentation of her husband’s credentials. She had welcomed guests with an easy charm. Now I suggest to Mr. Chibwa that the bright young economist whom he married in 1990 and who is the mother of their three younger children is going to be a considerable asset to him on the London diplomatic scene. “Oh, she is already,” he says and tells me about the barbecue for 200 she hosted soon after arriving at their official Highgate residence, on behalf of the diplomatic wives’ Tushuke Club, to raise funds for orphaned children in Zambia.

An admirer of British royalty since the late Queen Mother greeted the smartly-uniformed, cheering 12 -year-old schoolboy and his friends outside St. Mary’s School, Nchanga Township in 1962, Anderson Chibwa was bowled over by the Queen during their two encounters this summer, and by her talent for detail. “When she received me at Buckingham Palace she talked about staying at Government House in Lusaka in 1979 and spoke of ‘ that long road out to your airport.’ And at a garden party she introduced me to Prince Philip and spoke to him about my work with Care International. ”

There was also a meeting for the diplomatic couple with Prince Charles at a charity polo match in Swindon in August. But high-flying social engagements are embellishments to a job Anderson Chibwa takes very seriously, including as it does his accreditation to the Vatican, Switzerland, Ireland, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. And though representing Zambia to the wider public is a significant part of the job, looking after his own people is of paramount importance. “There are 10,000 Zambians in Britain and I want to try and bring them together more; get them involved with local projects. Many are in the medical profession and I would like to encourage them to form a local chapter of a Zambian medical association. Nigerian doctors working here have done so and they help to keep colleagues at home up-to-date with technology.” The high commissioner also wants to encourage qualified Zambians to go home when they qualify, rather than working abroad. But it is early days and that is tricky terrain. What is clear is that Anderson Chibwa, supported by his alpha-plus wife, will make the most of his few years in London to help expatriate Zambians feel they are part of a family and to generate greater understanding here of the distant country he is so proud to represent.

Maggie Currey